Mode of thinking--Chinese "Ying Yang"There exist in the present-day world two different systems of mode of thinking--- in epistemology, or the methodology of knowing objective things. They are the so-called Eastern thinking and Western thinking respectively. The method of thinking is of paramount importance as the basis and norm of behaviour in the development of every field of natural science.
The Chinese classical philosophy is termed "Tao", meaning literally the "way", whereby the generalized term "Tao" has come to be employed to cover certain ways of thinking, methods, laws and rules. With the advent of a written language in China there appeared works of classical philosophy of the greatest importance, namely The Book of Changes and the Yellow Emperor Classic. In these works, which have been researched in by scholars up to the present time it is pointed out: That which has no concrete form but by which everything in the world is necessarily governed so as to succeed or fail, to live or to die is called "Tao", whereas that which has a form or is visible is no other than an article or thing. In the Yellow Emperor Classic it is written: "The superior Tao is unfathomably high or deep. In another work, i.e. Book of Master Zhuang (a Taoist classic by Zhuangzai and his followers of the Warring States Period), it is written" As for Tao, it is sentient and credible, it lets things take their own courses and has no tangibility, it can be transmitted but not freely accepted, and it can be possessed but is incapable of being seen. It has its own substance and its own roots, and it has been in existence ever since remote ancient times before the creation of heaven and earth. It made gods of ghosts and of emperors, and it engendered heaven and earth. What is above the greatest summit of creation cannot vie with it in height; what is below the nadir of earth cannot be deemed deeper than it; what came into being before the creation of heaven and earth cannot compare with it in length of existence, and what grew up in remote ancient times is not so old as it.
In the Book of Changes it is stated that with the creation of heaven and earth came all the things of the world, with the appearance of all things of the world came the male and the female, with the male and the female came father and son, with father and son came the monarch and the ministers, and with the appearance of the monarch and the ministers were instituted ceremony and etiquette...In the Yellow Emperor Classic an important theory is expounded, which runs as follows: In an integrated matter or thing the unity of opposites, namely mutual inductance, mutual attraction, mutual motivation, interchange and interpenetration come into action to push forward the two sides of development of the matter or thing. In this way there came into being the two adjectives "Ying Yang" thinking in Chinese classical philosophy for describing the two aspects of a unified or integrated whole. However, the division of a matter or thing into "Ying Yang" is relative, not absolute. Chinese Classical philosophy admits that there is a certain degree of absoluteness in a matter or thing. For example, a man is a male and by no means to be called a female. Nevertheless, the concepts of male and female are relative in themselves. Were there to be no man in the world, there would absolutely be no woman. Chinese classical philosophy is a theory of relativity in the broad sense. Its thesis is that all matters and things can be divided into "Ying Yang" and that the symmetry and conservation of this division is universal.
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